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    Home » Blog » Book Recommendations

    The Best Book For Your First Book Club Meeting

    Published: Feb 24, 2022 by Tiffany Dahle · This post may contain affiliate links.

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    Collage of four book covers with text The best book club books 15 books for your first meeting. Books are The Guest List, 28 Summers, The Last Flight, and The Great Alone.

    Need a good book for your first book club meeting with a new group? These book picks are the perfect choice for getting your new friends hooked.

    Collage of four book covers: Lilac Girls, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, Regretting You, and The Silent Patient.

    When you first start up a book club, you want everyone excited to come back for the second meeting. One of the most critical steps is to choose the right first book.

    Ideally, you've had the conversation with the members before your first meeting to make sure you're all on the same page.

    Important things to consider:

    • How long do you want the books to be?
    • Will you read fiction or nonfiction books or both?
    • Which genres of books do you want to read?

    Many book clubs do a variety, so don't feel like you have to pigeonhole yourself too much, but it's good to know what everyone is interested in before you begin.

    The Most Important Factor

    When you do select that first book for your book club, start with something that's readily available at the library or in paperback.

    You never want to make it too hard for someone to find the book to read.

    On that note, consider looking for books available in multiple formats. Some like to read a real book in their hands, while others prefer to use their ereaders, and still others prefer to listen to audiobooks.

    This list of books covers all sorts of genres and different books that you should easily be able to find and that many people will enjoy, whether they've read them or not.

    Whatever you do, make sure you have that second book up and ready after you have that first book club meeting!

    Books For Your First Book Club Meeting

    1

    Big Little Lies

    Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one.

    Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection.

    New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years.

    These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place.

    2

    Daisy Jones & The Six

    Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go.

    The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

    Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

    3

    Where the Crawdads Sing

    For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl.

    But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved.

    When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens.

    4

    Lilac Girls

    New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.

    An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.

    5

    Regretting You

    Morgan Grant and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Clara, would like nothing more than to be nothing alike.

    Morgan is determined to prevent her daughter from making the same mistakes she did. By getting pregnant and married way too young, Morgan put her own dreams on hold. Clara doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Her predictable mother doesn’t have a spontaneous bone in her body.

    With warring personalities and conflicting goals, Morgan and Clara find it increasingly difficult to coexist. The only person who can bring peace to the household is Chris—Morgan’s husband, Clara’s father, and the family anchor. But that peace is shattered when Chris is involved in a tragic and questionable accident.

    6

    The Last Flight

    Claire Cook has a perfect life. Married to the scion of a political dynasty, with a Manhattan townhouse and a staff of ten, her surroundings are elegant, her days flawlessly choreographed, and her future auspicious.

    But behind closed doors, nothing is quite as it seems. That perfect husband has a temper that burns bright and he's not above using his staff to track Claire's every move.

    What he doesn't know is that Claire has worked for months on a plan to vanish. A plan that takes her to the airport, poised to run from it all.

    But a chance meeting in the airport bar brings her together with a woman whose circumstances seem equally dire. Together they make a last-minute decision.

    7

    The Great Alone

    Alaska, 1974. Ernt Allbright came home from the Vietnam War a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes the impulsive decision to move his wife and daughter north where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

    Cora will do anything for the man she loves, even if means following him into the unknown. Thirteen-year-old Leni, caught in the riptide of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship, has little choice but to go along, daring to hope this new land promises her family a better future.

    8

    The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

    France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

    Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

    But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

    9

    Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

    The women of Freesia Court are convinced that there is nothing good coffee, delicious desserts, and a strong shoulder can’t fix. Laughter is the glue that holds them together—the foundation of a book group they call AHEB (Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons), an unofficial “club” that becomes much more.

    It becomes a lifeline. Holding on through forty eventful years, there’s Faith, a lonely mother of twins who harbors a terrible secret that has condemned her to living a lie; big, beautiful Audrey, the resident sex queen who knows that with good posture and an attitude you can get away with anything; Merit, the doctor’s shy wife with the face of an angel and the private hell of an abusive husband; Kari, a wise woman with a wonderful laugh who knows that the greatest gifts appear after life’s fiercest storms; and finally, Slip, a tiny spitfire of a woman who isn’t afraid to look trouble straight in the eye.

    10

    The Silent Patient

    Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas.

    One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.

    Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

    11

    The Guest List

    The bride – The plus one – The best man – The wedding planner  – The bridesmaid – The body

    On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher.

    It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

    But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human.

    12

    28 Summers

    When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election.

    There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other?

    Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere—through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise—until Mallory learns she's dying.

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